Forestry - Managing the family property

I hope they all have solid hearts. Some of the trees I have will for sure have center rot, in the oaks at least. They need to go but now is not the time.

How is the sale taylored? You doing sealed bids?

 

Those big trees were all solid. Some of the shingle oaks have quite a bit of rot in the butt log.

The forester will take all the measurements from all the trees we marked then figure up a number. That number will be the minimum bid accepted. He'll then advertise the timber to places he's worked with before and had good results...and take sealed bids from them.

 

Marked a bunch more timber this morning. I thought we would finish today but decided to mark another area we hadn't originally planned on.

I think we are going to end up with 12 veneer grade walnuts, about 6-7 saw grade walnuts, and then everything else (sycamore, tulip poplar, cherry, and shingle/red oak, in order of volume). I won't have the totals until next week, the forester and I are guessing we are over 100K bdft.

 

I had Earl mark one particular valley heavy to bring up total bdft in order to make the sale more appealing. As luck would have it, when the 42" gas pipe came through they went right through where it had been hit hard. American Electric Power owns a ton of land in my County. I butt up against them on several lines. They logged shortly after me and brought out not quite 3 million feet. They had logged way more acres (~130 I think) and most of it had not been touched for 40 years or more. It's still nice woodlands even after that purge. I have tried unsucessfully to purchase a 40 acre tract of it that I butt on two sides, that is landlocked. I dunno if I could afford it anymore but will try again in the future.

 

I got in the woods at first light and did some spraying this morning. It was slow progress...not sure if that was because of me or the spicebush jungle I was working it...but it definitely felt like more work today.

The forester made his last visit this morning and we marked another 30ish trees. We are scheduled to talk on Wednesday on numbers, terms of sale, etc.

 

Best of luck

 

Total is 314 trees and and 112 MBFT. That's only about 7 trees/acre and about 360 BDFT/tree. Minimum bid is about what I expected so we are going to proceed with the sale.

 

What's the general state of industry around you? Been 'quiet' here...not seen many logs being hauled.

 

We had a lull about a year ago but seems pretty active now.

 

Should only get busier since the mills will be looking to fill up their yards before winter. We had a wet early summer and I don't know if that affected things or not.